Aldi starts streaming music service with Napster

Aldi and Napster are launching a streaming music service in Germany under the name Aldi Life Musik. The service will come out of its test phase on September 24 and will offer 34 million pieces of music, more than 10,000 audio books and 4000 internet radio stations for 7.99 euros per month.

The service offers a similar package to Apple Music, Spotify and Deezer, but does what Aldi became great with: compete on price, Computerbase writes. The app for phones and tablets also includes a music recognition feature, similar to Shazam. The application works on Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices. A browser app can be used on the desktop.

The technology behind the application comes from Napster. It is also possible to stream up to 320kbit/s. It is not yet known which codec is used, although Napster Mobile uses aac for the streams, so it is likely that Aldi Life does too. The service will initially only be available in Germany and can be tried for free for the first thirty days. Not many details are known about the service yet, except that combination packages are offered through Aldi’s phone plans and there is a family version for 14.99, which allows six users. There is no free version that is supported by ads, for example.